Christianity As Mystical Fact

THE FACT that the Divine, the Word, the eternal Logos was no longer
met only on a spiritual plane in the dark secrecy of the Mysteries but
that in speaking about the Logos they were indicating the historical
and human personality of Jesus, must have exercised the deepest
influence upon those who acknowledged Christianity. Previously the
Logos had been seen as reality only in different stages of human
perfection. It was possible to observe the delicate, subtle
differences in the spiritual life of the personality and to see in
what manner and degree the Logos became living within the individual
personalities seeking initiation. A higher degree of maturity had to
be interpreted as a higher stage in the evolution of spiritual
existence. The preparatory steps had to be sought in a past spiritual
life. And the present life had to be regarded as the preparatory stage
for future stages of spiritual evolution. The conservation of the
spiritual power of the soul and the eternity of that power could be
assumed from the Jewish esoteric teaching (The Zohar), Nothing in the
world is lost, nothing falls into the void, not even the words and
voice of man; everything has its place and destination.
(see Note 72)
The one personality was only a metamorphosis of the soul which changes from
personality to personality. The single life of the personality was
considered only as a link in the chain of development reaching forward
and backward. Through Christianity this changing Logos is directed
from the individual personality to the unique personality of Jesus.
What previously had been distributed throughout the world was now
united in a unique personality. Jesus became the unique God-Man. In
Jesus something once was present which must appear to man as the
greatest of ideals and with which in the course of man's repeated
earthly lives he ought in the future to be more and more united. Jesus
took upon himself the apotheosis of the whole of humanity. In him was
sought what formerly could be sought only in a man's own soul. What
had always been found as divine and eternal in the human personality
had been taken from it. And all this eternal could be seen in Jesus.
It is not the eternal part in the soul that conquers death and is
raised as divine through its own power, but the one God who was in
Jesus, will appear and raise the souls. From this it follows that an
entirely new significance was given to personality. The eternal,
immortal part had been taken from it. Only the personality as such was
left. If eternity were not to be denied, immortality must be ascribed
to the personality itself. The belief in the soul's eternal
metamorphosis became the belief in personal immortality. The
personality gained infinite importance because it was the only thing
in man to which he could cling.  Henceforth there is nothing between
the personality and the infinite God. A direct relationship with Him
must be established. Man was no longer capable of becoming divine
himself in a greater or lesser degree; he was simply man, standing in
a direct but outward relationship to God. Those who knew the ancient
Mystery-conceptions were bound to feel that this brought quite a new
note into the conception of the world. Many people found themselves in
this position during the first centuries of Christianity. They knew
the nature of the Mysteries; if they wished to become Christians they
were obliged to come to terms with the old method. This brought them
into difficult conflicts within their souls. They tried in the most
varied ways to find a balance between the divergent world conceptions.
This conflict is reflected in the writings of early Christian times,
both of pagans attracted by the sublimity of Christianity and of those
Christians who found it hard to give up the ways of the Mysteries.
Christianity grew slowly out of Mystery wisdom. On the one hand
Christian convictions were presented in the form of the Mystery
truths, and on the other the Mystery wisdom was clothed in Christian
words. Clement of Alexandria (died 217 A.D.), a Christian writer whose
education had been pagan, provides an instance of this: Thus the Lord
did not hinder us from doing good while keeping the Sabbath, but
allowed us to communicate of those divine mysteries, and of that holy
light, to those who are able to receive them. He did not disclose to
the many what did not belong to the many; but to the few to whom he
knew that they belonged, who were capable of receiving and being
moulded according to them. But secret things are entrusted to speech,
not to writing, as God confided the unutterable mystery to the Logos,
not to the written word.  God gave to the church some, apostles; and
some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for
the edifying of the body of Christ.
(see Note 73)
By the most diverse means
personalities tried to find the way from the ancient conceptions to
the Christian ones. And each of them, believing he was on the right
path, called the others heretics. Side by side with the latter, the
Church grew stronger as an external institution. The more power it
gained the more the path recognized as the right one by the decisions
of councils took the place of personal investigation. It was for the
Church to decide who deviated too far from the divine truth which it
guarded. The concept of a heretic took firmer and firmer shape.
During the first centuries of Christianity the search for the divine
path was a much more personal matter than it became later. A long
distance had to be traveled before Augustine's conviction could become
possible: I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the
authority of the Church.
(see Note in Chapter 6)

The conflict between the method of the Mysteries and that of the
Christian religion acquired a special stamp through the various
Gnostic sects and writers. We may class as Gnostics all the writers
of the first Christian centuries who sought for a deeper spiritual
sense in Christian teachings. (A brilliant account of the development
of Gnosis is given in G. R. S. Mead's book mentioned above, Fragments
of a Faith Forgotten.) We understand the Gnostics when we look upon
them as saturated with the ancient wisdom of the Mysteries and
striving to understand Christianity from that point of view. For them
Christ is the Logos. As such He is above all of a spiritual nature. In
His primal essence He cannot approach man from without. He must be
awakened in the soul. But the historical Jesus must bear some
relationship to this spiritual Logos. This was the crucial question
for the Gnostics. Some settled it in one way, some in another. The
essential point common to them all was that to arrive at a true
understanding of the Christ-idea, mere historical tradition was not
sufficient, but that it must be sought either in the wisdom of the
Mysteries or in the Neoplatonic philosophy which was derived from the
same source. The Gnostics had faith in human wisdom, and believed it
capable of bringing forth a Christ by whom the historical Christ could
be measured. In fact, through the former alone could the latter be
understood and beheld in the right light.

From this point of view the doctrine given in the books of Dionysius
the Areopagite is of special interest. It is true that there is no
mention of these writings until the sixth century. But it matters
little when and where they were written; the point is that they give
an account of Christianity which is clothed in the language of
Neoplatonic philosophy, and presented in the form of a spiritual
vision of the higher world. In any case this is a form of presentation
belonging to the first Christian centuries. In olden times this
presentation was handed on in the form of oral tradition; in fact the
most important things were not entrusted to writing. Christianity thus
presented could be regarded as reflected in the mirror of the
Neoplatonic world conception. Sense-perception dims man's spiritual
vision. He must go beyond the material world. But all human concepts
are derived primarily from observation by the senses. What man
observes with his senses he calls existent; what he does not so
observe he calls non-existent. Therefore if he wishes to open up an
actual view of the divine he must go beyond existence and
non-existence, for as he conceives them these also have their origin
in the sphere of the senses. In this sense God is neither existent nor
non-existent. He is super-existent. Consequently He cannot be attained
by means of ordinary perception, which has to do with existing things.
We must be raised above ourselves, above our sense-observation, above
our reasoning logic if we are to find the bridge to spiritual
conception; then we are able to get a glimpse into the perspectives of
the divine.  But this super-existent divinity has brought forth the
Logos, the foundation of the universe, filled with wisdom. Man's lower
powers are able to reach Him. He is present in the structure of the
world as the spiritual Son of God; He is the mediator between God and
man. He may be present in man in various stages. For instance, He may
be realized in an external institution, in which those variously
imbued with His spirit are grouped into a hierarchy. A Church of
this kind is the material reality of the Logos, and the power which
lives in it lived personally in the Christ become flesh, in Jesus.
Thus through Jesus the Church is united to God; in Him lies its
meaning and crowning-point.

One thing was clear to all Gnosis: one must come to terms with the
idea of Jesus as a personality. Christ and Jesus must be brought into
relationship with each other. Divinity was taken from human
personality and must be recovered in one way or another. It must be
possible to find it again in Jesus. The mystic was dealing with a
degree of divinity within himself, and with his own earthly material
personality. The Christian was dealing with the latter and also with a
perfect God, far above all that is humanly attainable. If we hold
firmly to this conception a fundamentally mystical attitude of soul is
only possible when the soul finds the higher spiritual element in
itself and its spiritual eye is opened so that the light issuing from
the Christ in Jesus falls upon it. The union of the soul with its
highest powers is at the same time union with the historical Christ.
For mysticism is a direct feeling and experience of the divine within
the soul. But a God far transcending everything human can never dwell
in the soul in the real sense of the word. Gnosis and all subsequent
Christian mysticism represent the effort in one way or another to lay
hold of that God and to apprehend Him directly in the soul. A conflict
in this case was inevitable. In reality it was only possible for a man
to find his own divine part; but this is a human-divine part, that is,
a divine part at a certain stage of development. Yet the Christian God
is a definite one, perfect in Himself. It was possible for a person to
find in himself the power to strive upward to this God, but he could
not say that what he experienced in his own soul at any stage of
development was one with God. A gulf appeared between what it was
possible to perceive in the soul and what Christianity described as
divine. It is the gulf between knowledge and belief, between cognition
and religious feeling. This gulf does not exist for a mystic in the
old sense of the word. He knows that he can comprehend the divine only
by degrees, and he also knows why this is so. It is clear to him that
this gradual attainment is a real attainment of the true, living
divinity and he finds it difficult to speak of a perfect, isolated
divine principle. A mystic of this kind does not wish to recognize a
perfect God, but he wishes to experience the divine life. He wishes to
become divine himself; he does not wish to gain an external
relationship to the Godhead. It is of the essence of Christianity that
its mysticism in this sense starts with an assumption. The Christian
mystic seeks to behold divinity within himself, but he must look to
the historical Christ as his eyes do to the sun; just as the physical
eye says to itself, By means of the sun I see what I have power to
see, so the Christian mystic says to himself, I will intensify my
innermost being in the direction of divine vision, and the light which
makes such vision possible is given in the Christ who has appeared. He
is, and through this I am able to rise to the highest within myself.
In this the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages show how they differ
from the mystics of the ancient Mysteries. (See my book, Die Mystik im
Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens. Berlin, 1901,
Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age,
Englewood, New Jersey, 1960, Volume 3 of
the Centennial Edition of the Written Works of Rudolf Steiner, 18611961.)